Individuals in a work organization are confronted daily with the need to organize and manage the vast amount and varied types of information that flow across their desks. Knowledge management entails the organization and apt handling of such information flow to enhance productivity, both on the individual level and for the work organization as a whole. Thus, knowledge management systems address collecting, selecting and sharing information in multiple forms so that work can be done more effectively. A well-designed knowledge management system should help individuals find what they need, identify useful information, share useful information, codify information, and enable effective use of information collections.
Current design methods for knowledge management systems for a work organization generally follow an ad-hoc approach. That is, knowledge management systems often are relegated to the space that is left over after the layout for workstations or office furniture has been determined. Further, current knowledge management systems, if they exist at all, ignore individual needs, which may be influenced by the individual's work role in the organization, the particular type of organization in which he works, or his own personality. Consequently, the organization and storage of valuable knowledge tends to be random, with individually designed knowledge management systems being incompatible with other systems in the office environment, creating barriers to the sharing of knowledge and the harvesting of knowledge from individuals' collections. Also, due to the lack of knowledge management planning, workers often are provided knowledge management tools either that are not particularly well-suited for the worker's role or that are unaccompanied by instructions on how to most effectively use the tools. Such shortcomings introduce worker inefficiency and, thus, contribute unnecessarily to increased costs.
Although individuals work in different work environments and face different challenges and despite the seemingly random nature of their information collections, the ways in which individuals collect, select and share information inevitably falls within a finite number of knowledge flow patterns. Use of these identifiable, predictable patterns lends itself to facilitating the design of knowledge management systems that are tailored for the individual and yet that include a degree of cohesiveness such that knowledge may easily be harvested from individual collections and shared among individuals in a work organization.
Further, it would be advantageous to facilitate the design of such knowledge management systems by the use of a simple, interactive diagnostic tool that is based on the discovered knowledge flow patterns. Both the diagnostic tool and the resulting knowledge management system should be easy to use by the individual worker. Also, it would be desirable for the diagnostic tool to continually recommend updates for the knowledge management system, thus ensuring that the knowledge management system adapts to both changes in the individual's work role and technological advances in knowledge management products and practices. Because the resulting systems will be tailored for the individual, the individual's productivity will be enhanced. And, because the resulting individual systems will include compatible components, sharing knowledge among individuals and collecting knowledge from individuals will be facilitated.
The ease of use of the diagnostic tool and the knowledge management systems, the realization of immediate benefits, and the adaptability of the knowledge management systems to individual and technological changes, will ensure continued use of both the diagnostic tool and the resulting knowledge management systems. Consequently, the diagnostic tool and knowledge management systems will become ingrained in the organization's work culture and thus will continue to provide long-term benefits.